A WOMAN ‘strangled’ a child with a towel so hard he passed out and didn’t come round for 20 minutes before bursting into tears and being told to stand in a corner, a court has heard.

Lisa Pratt, 36, and Andrew Clent, 30, each deny three counts of child cruelty and Pratt denies one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The pair, both of Mercury Close, Bampton, and who were a couple at the time, are accused of carrying out multiple acts of ‘physical and emotional abuse’ according to prosecutors.

The offences against three children are alleged to have taken place at a number of addresses in Witney between January 2010 and April 2015.

As the trial at Oxford Crown Court continued yesterday, the jury of seven men and five women were shown a police interview recorded with one of the alleged victims in 2015 after events had come to a head in April and the children had left the house.

The child, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that he had witnessed Pratt suffocating another child with a towel causing him to ‘black out.’

He said: “Lisa strangled [the alleged victim] and made him have a blackout. Lisa found out she could use a towel to strangle him, to make him go blue.

“Lisa held his neck and put a towel on his neck and he went blue and started to shake and he fell to the floor.”

He added: “It made me feel really sad and upset and at night time I would cry. I never told anyone because I was too scared.

“What [Pratt] has done is horrible, I was so upset at what was happening and at what was happening to us."

The court also heard how on other occasions the children would not be allowed to use the toilet and would be forced to soil and wet themselves.

They were also punched, kicked and slapped by their alleged abusers as well as subject to bullying and emotional abuse, the court heard.

Pratt and Clent deny the charges.

The trial at Oxford Crown Court continues.